The present invention relates generally to the field of error detection coding and decoding.
As is known, in the field of electronic communications, digital information can be encoded and electronically transmitted through a transmission medium to a receiver, where the digital information is decoded. Noise and other factors, however, can cause errors in the digital information. The digital information received and decoded at the receiver can thus have errors. To detect and, in some cases, correct such errors, the digital information can be encoded with error detection coding before transmission. A variety of error detection coding techniques are known, including error detection coding that falls into the general categories of linear block coding and convolution coding. Typically, all such error detection coding involves encoding the digital information into codewords that include additional or redundant data bits that facilitate detecting and, in some instances, correcting transmission errors in the digital information.
One measure of the potential effectiveness of an error detection coding technique is the “minimum coding distance” among the codewords. Generally speaking, the greater the minimum coding distance, the greater the error detection and correction potential of a coding technique. The minimum coding distance, however, can also affect the coding efficiency. For a coding technique that uses codewords of a particular length, the greater the minimum coding distance, the fewer the number of the codewords that the coding technique can use to encode the digital information. Thus, while an increase in minimum coding distance increases the error detection and correction capability of a coding technique, the increase in minimum coding distance decreases the efficiency of the coding technique. Embodiments of the present invention address this and/or other problems in prior art error detection coding techniques.